#BLMers now demanding that white people give up our homes!

[Harry Bosch]

I wouldn't begin to demand white people give up their homes. I would demand that rent seekers who are almost universally white (but in reality, regardless of race) be forced to sell their rental properties to lower income locals at price points commensurate with the rent paid over the previous years (to prevent rate hike inflation).

This would in effect be forcing "people who are mostly white", to sell the homes they don't live in to "people who are largely/mostly black".

Because really, what purpose do those people serve other than profiting on "being there first"?

I'm a rent seeker, but I'm not white! But there are a lot of reasons why some people need to rent. For one, many people move around a lot due to their jobs. If you're going to live in an area less than 10 years, you're better off renting. I've also always believed in "leasing fun". So, I like to rent homes for a week at a ski mountain or when we're on vacation. Many people can't afford to buy because they don't have the down payment. Rent and save; then buy. Many people want flexibility. Many people have poor credit for a non-recurring problem. Rent until your credit improves, then buy. There's nothing to be ashamed for when you're a renter.

It's not a term I'm familiar with, but I took 'rent seeker' to be a landlord?

I'm both. I own a property and have a renter. Then I rent places when I go on ski trips or fishing trips. I'll definitely rent a place for kids when they start going to college. I think that RE is greatly overrated unless you plan to hold for a long time. People always focus on when real estate increases in value, but forget the bad times. In Oregon, real estate dropped in half during 2009 and 2010.

 

[ruby sparks]

Even partial equity for renters would be an amazing advancement towards equality. It could be just another rate defined within the social contract, and would go a long way towards establishing generational wealth in communities of color.

It probably would. Who do you think should give it to them to get the ball rolling? Please don't say parasite landlords.

Now, once the ball is rolling for a while, I can see it working, because buy-to-lets, as they are called here (and perhaps by extension all residential properties, given that the same property can be occupied by either owners or renters so the category boundary is not defined by the property itself) would then not be such an attractive investment, and the rate of price increases would slow, and then by my estimation more people would be winners (including the renters who are gathering up equity that they might use as a deposit to buy if they want that).

Obviously, if owners lose out, by having to give rent back to tenants, they might otherwise just put up the rents to cover the loss, which would then be a sort of enforced savings policy for renters, while making rents more unaffordable.

Don't expect me to agree with 'broken' or 'evil' system. My view is that in moderation, capitalism, including the property market, is overall a good thing. A route to betterment for those with initiative and desire. But I do agree that in many countries, the property market is too free. Places to live in (homes) have become primarily (or too much) seen as investments. I think that has led to quite a few problems, especially nowadays for young people, who find it hard to get on the 1st rung of the property ladder, even those (and sadly it's not all) who are prepared to forego spending their cash on luxuries in order to save up. Making regular savings, how many young people even know that's a thing?

 

[ruby sparks]

It's not a term I'm familiar with, but I took 'rent seeker' to be a landlord?

I'm both. I own a property and have a renter. Then I rent places when I go on ski trips or fishing trips. I'll definitely rent a place for kids when they start going to college. I think that RE is greatly overrated unless you plan to hold for a long time. People always focus on when real estate increases in value, but forget the bad times. In Oregon, real estate dropped in half during 2009 and 2010.

What's RE?

 

[Bomb#20]

I would demand that rent seekers ... be forced to sell their rental properties to lower income locals at price points commensurate with the rent paid over the previous years (to prevent rate hike inflation).
...
Because really, what purpose do those people serve other than profiting on "being there first"?

One of the neat things about voluntary transactions is that you can generally get answers to that sort of question simply by examining the motivation of the voluntary transactors. In the case of rent, renters seek out landlords and offer them money in order to get some service they want that wouldn't be available to them if the landlords didn't provide it. Landlords serve the purpose of keeping the rain off people's heads.

Often, buying a property to let out is a venture involving risk and often hard work, and a route which some might take as a proactive way to essentially provide a pension for themselves?

And they're doing it by parasitizing and sitting on limited resources while inflating their value.
...
Rent is effectively charging someone a premium to give you equity.

It is a product of our faulty system of "ownership", and it is <expletive deleted> evil.

I asked you this before and you never answered, so I'll ask again. Your ideology isn't the only one that makes the people it infects pick out a minority group and call them parasites. Do you have any reason for thinking yours is an inch different from those other ideologies?

 

[Bomb#20]

What's RE?

Real Estate.

 

[Bomb#20]

I would demand that rent seekers who are almost universally white (but in reality, regardless of race) be forced to sell their rental properties to...

I'm a rent seeker, but I'm not white! But there are a lot of reasons why some people need to rent...

It's not a term I'm familiar with, but I took 'rent seeker' to be a landlord?

I'm both. I own a property and have a renter. Then I rent places when I go on ski trips or fishing trips. I'll definitely rent a place for kids when they start going to college. ...

"Rent seeker" doesn't mean a landlord, except to the extent that it's intended to disparage landlords by equivocation fallacy.

"Rent-seeking" is a term of art in economics; it has only a historical connection with "rent" in the conventional sense of paying a landlord to let you use his land. A typical example of what economists mean by "rent-seeking" is the lobbying the dairy industry went in for in the 1800s and early 1900s to bribe the government to make it illegal to sell yellow-colored margarine. Economists generally deplore such anti-competitive behavior, for obvious reasons; hence so-called "rent-seeking" became a criticism among experts. But actually buying land and building a house and charging people real plain-English rent to live in it rarely qualifies as "rent-seeking" in the technical sense. However, a lot of people who are ideologically hostile to landlord-tenant arrangements have seized on this bit of economists' technical jargon and simply took for granted (or in some case knew better and equivocated anyway for the sake of rhetoric) that renting out land is "rent-seeking"; these people now use "rent-seeker" as a pejorative against landlords, hoping to piggy-back off economists' disapproval of so-called "rent-seeking" to promote anti-landlord ideology.

 

[Bomb#20]

I own a property and have a renter. ... I think that RE is greatly overrated unless you plan to hold for a long time. People always focus on when real estate increases in value, but forget the bad times. In Oregon, real estate dropped in half during 2009 and 2010.

I.e., your renter is the one who gets the benefit of living on the land even though you are the one who bears all the risk of loss if the land becoming less desirable. And you're okay with that because the renter is paying you. And the renter is okay with paying you because that's a risk he or she can't afford. So the risk is being transferred, from the one less able to take the risk to the one more able to take it. I.e., you're selling insurance.

 

[Jarhyn]

Even partial equity for renters would be an amazing advancement towards equality. It could be just another rate defined within the social contract, and would go a long way towards establishing generational wealth in communities of color.

It probably would. Who do you think should give it to them to get the ball rolling? Please don't say parasite landlords.

Now, once the ball is rolling for a while, I can see it working, because buy-to-lets, as they are called here (and perhaps by extension all residential properties, given that the same property can be occupied by either owners or renters so the category boundary is not defined by the property itself) would then not be such an attractive investment, and the rate of price increases would slow, and then by my estimation more people would be winners (including the renters who are gathering up equity that they might use as a deposit to buy if they want that).

Obviously, if owners lose out, by having to give rent back to tenants, they might otherwise just put up the rents to cover the loss, which would then be a sort of enforced savings policy for renters, while making rents more unaffordable.

Don't expect me to agree with 'broken' or 'evil' system. My view is that in moderation, capitalism, including the property market, is overall a good thing. A route to betterment for those with initiative and desire. But I do agree that in many countries, the property market is too free. Places to live in (homes) have become primarily (or too much) seen as investments. I think that has led to quite a few problems, especially nowadays for young people, who find it hard to get on the 1st rung of the property ladder, even those (and sadly it's not all) who are prepared to forego spending their cash on luxuries in order to save up. Making regular savings, how many young people even know that's a thing?

Keyword here: moderation. What I am proposing is a legal moderation to capitalism re: ownership.

 

[Jarhyn]

I'm a rent seeker, but I'm not white! But there are a lot of reasons why some people need to rent...

It's not a term I'm familiar with, but I took 'rent seeker' to be a landlord?

I'm both. I own a property and have a renter. Then I rent places when I go on ski trips or fishing trips. I'll definitely rent a place for kids when they start going to college. ...

"Rent seeker" doesn't mean a landlord, except to the extent that it's intended to disparage landlords by equivocation fallacy.

"Rent-seeking" is a term of art in economics; it has only a historical connection with "rent" in the conventional sense of paying a landlord to let you use his land. A typical example of what economists mean by "rent-seeking" is the lobbying the dairy industry went in for in the 1800s and early 1900s to bribe the government to make it illegal to sell yellow-colored margarine. Economists generally deplore such anti-competitive behavior, for obvious reasons; hence so-called "rent-seeking" became a criticism among experts. But actually buying land and building a house and charging people real plain-English rent to live in it rarely qualifies as "rent-seeking" in the technical sense. However, a lot of people who are ideologically hostile to landlord-tenant arrangements have seized on this bit of economists' technical jargon and simply took for granted (or in some case knew better and equivocated anyway for the sake of rhetoric) that renting out land is "rent-seeking"; these people now use "rent-seeker" as a pejorative against landlords, hoping to piggy-back off economists' disapproval of so-called "rent-seeking" to promote anti-landlord ideology.

In philosophical use, not paying attention to your bullshit no-true-scotsman, "rent seeking" is any behavior where one party, as a product of initially paying for a thing, leverages that thing to extort others who need it but cannot afford the initial investment to acquire it for themselves, for more value than the rent seeker themselves used to acquire or create it, while not ceding ownership to the renter in the least.

 

[Jarhyn]

Your ideology isn't the only one that makes the people it infects pick out a minority group and call them parasites. Do you have any reason for thinking yours is an inch different from those other ideologies?

"Both sides" and not even a strong "both sides". Getting resources without doing commensurate continuing WORK is parasitism. Period. It is the word that actually describes the acknowledged behavior. Now, quit with your bullshit and just say who you, yourself, are accusing here of being "the actual" parasites, and we can discuss whether those people are, in fact, parasites. But "was born to a wealthy family and had enough inheritance or clout to buy homes they are not going to live in, and generally let go to shit" is not a justification for absorbing equity that other people are, in full, paying for.

 

[ruby sparks]

Getting resources without doing commensurate continuing WORK is parasitism. Period. It is the word that actually describes the acknowledged behavior.

But as well as work, risk has been mentioned a few times and yet you are not including for it.

Also, your citing someone who inherited enough to buy rental properties without themselves doing any work is only one subset of landlords, and I don’t see any such people at my local Landlords Association meetings. I think that to some extent you are dealing in caricatures.

 

[repoman]

Wouldn't home owner's who want to sell some time soon and landlords want more people moving into the area? Renters would want less.

 

[Derec]

Some people say something stupid and you generalize about an entire international movement?

If this was the first time #BLMers did/said something stupid, you'd have a point. But they have been doing this type of shit since they burst on the national scene in 2014.
Two recent examples from Chicago - a leader of the local #BLM chapter defended looting as a form of "reparations" and the #BLM mob is also demanding that charges against a black thug who shot at police be dismissed.

I think you really need to take a chill pill.

I am perfectly calm dude!

 

[Derec]

I wouldn't begin to demand white people give up their homes. I would demand that rent seekers

who are almost universally white (but in reality, regardless of race) be forced to sell their rental properties to lower income locals at price points commensurate with the rent paid over the previous years (to prevent rate hike inflation).

How is that even practicable?
Many renters can't buy real estate (even at artificially low prices) and others may not want to because renting fits their lifestyle or life stage better.

This would in effect be forcing "people who are mostly white", to sell the homes they don't live in to "people who are largely/mostly black".

Any forced selling, especially one motivated by race, is wrong and antithetical to liberal principles.

Because really, what purpose do those people serve other than profiting on "being there first"?

Who are you calling "these people"?

 

[Angra Mainyu]

I wouldn't begin to demand white people give up their homes. I would demand that rent seekers who are almost universally white (but in reality, regardless of race) be forced to sell their rental properties to lower income locals at price points commensurate with the rent paid over the previous years (to prevent rate hike inflation).

This would in effect be forcing "people who are mostly white", to sell the homes they don't live in to "people who are largely/mostly black".

Because really, what purpose do those people serve other than profiting on "being there first"?

What purpuse do these people serve? People are not just means to serve someone else's purpose. Rather, these people own some real state as a means to an end: it's an investment.
For example, if Jane has some money (which she got investing in the stock market, or making computer programs, or because someone died and left her the money, or some other lawful way), she may want to invest her money rather than spend it right away. Different investment options have different risks and give different returns. One of the options is real state.

Now you are proposing to take away her freedom to invest in real state, reducing her options. Why would you do that?

In the short run, what you propose is to forcibly take away a person's property.
In the long run, of course people will know that they may not invest in real state. And construction companies will be less inclined to make houses, apartments, etc., as the people who would want to invest on them are no longer allowed to do so. In addition to a loss of freedom, you may well be getting a shortage of apartments.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Why do you believe that property values increasing is a good thing? It isn't. Increasing property values is very bad for the economy as a whole, the overall economy. Increasing property values increases housing costs which increases inflation.

Do you believe that inflation is good for the economy?

The inflation in property values in the housing market is what, in conjunction with the absolutely insane belief that Wall Street doesn't need to be regulated by the government, that caused the Great Recession of 2007, the third worse depression in the last 100 years after the Trump ineptitude Greater Great Depression that we are in right now and the now Lesser Great Depression of the 1930s.

Property values reflect the neighborhood. Make the neighborhood better, more people would like to live there, the price goes up.

 

[Derec]

Actually, you're wrong. It is similar to what happens--what I saw happen where I grew up-- to farmland: Someone wants to 'improve' the land and change the purpose. They buy up some acres from an aging farmer or his estate and put up some homes. Taxed at a higher rate, the county is happy and farmers nearby see an increase in their property values. And an increase in their taxes. New neighbors who moved for the 'serenity of country life' are offended by the smell of manure spread on fields and disturbed by the normal smells and dirt associated with farming. They complain. It gets worse as farmers try to keep up with the times and increase their modest hog operation to one that will be profitable--but requires a manure lagoon. No one wants to live downwind. Or something else, depending on operation. Or they can't afford to 'modernize' or they're getting older or whatever. Repeat the process long enough and pretty soon, the few farmers that have managed to hold on to their land are hanging by a thread. Another generation and that thread is gone and forgotten.

What does that have to do with this case? This is not farmland, it's residential/light commercial area that is staying that way.

When neighborhoods are gentrified, what happens is that local small businesses are pushed out. People, at least most Americans, are comforted by name brands so when that bodega that has served the neighborhood for 40 years is bought by a Starbucks, then the new neighbors are delighted. They didn't use the bodega anyways. Big boxes come in, small family owned restaurants are bought up and everything becomes a chain.

I am sure there are chain businesses opening up in gentrified areas. But there is also going to be demand for independently owned bistros and the like. And let's not pretend that downscale neighborhoods do not have chains. Besides, is a run down "bodega" [note that these neighborhoods are usually classified as "food deserts" because those bodegas often do not sell fresh food and so the neighborhood could really use a Publix or a Kroger] really that great that a nicer store, even if part of a larger chain, would not be a great improvement?

Property taxes rise steadily as the neighborhood is improved and property owners--who may or may not live there--cash out if they are lucky and sometimes are forced out as rising property values increase their property taxes.

Even if they sell because of rising property taxes, they still cash out. If they buy a property for $20k, but sell for $120k, how are they harmed?

Any increase in property tax is passed along to tenants--businesses and families and both get priced out of the neighborhood where they grew up and raised their kids.

It's a folly to demand that a neighborhood must be kept static through generations.

It's not possible to move en masse and often moving, means moving down, not up. Communities and community structure and cohesion break apart. Families that used to rely on one another are the new people in a neighborhood that may simply be another faceless anonymous bland development owned by people far away who do not give a tinker's damn about maintaining the buildings, or anything else.

I would think that landlords pre-gentrification would be far more likely not to give "a tinker's damn about maintaining the buildings" than post-gentrification.

Moving is expensive, especially if you are not particularly wealthy and very, very expensive if you are hanging by a thread. Currently have a family member who has been looking for their next place to live as their rent goes up and up. Buying would be cheaper but it's hard to save up the 20% when rent consumes such a huge portion of your income.....

That is true, but that does not justify being opposed to neighborhoods getting improved. Hell, there was a case in Portland a few years ago when anti-gentrification activists were protesting against a fucking grocery store!
They'd rather have a crappy food desert than a neighborhood with a real grocery store because the latter is, in the words of Hooper X, GENTRIFICATION!

A year or so back, our relatively new next door neighbor started complaining about the people living in the rental home around the corner. Kept saying something about how he didn't like what he saw going on. I asked other neighbors if they had noticed anything weird or bad going on. It's a rental property and usually rented to college students so everyone is used to watching out for bad stuff--usually out of control parties, although that has largely been stopped by working with the landlord. Nobody saw a thing. Oh, the new kids living in that house--the ones who have been probably the quietest neighbors since the house became a rental? They're black. My neighbor sold his house to a nice couple. I want to think that what he saw going on was not 'black people.' But....

I get your point. You think he was complaining because they were black. But it could have been for a myriad other reasons. The consequence of your attitude is that it is impossible for a white person to complain about anything black people ever do, when complaining about the same thing when done by white people would be perfectly acceptable.
I am also not sure what that has to do with the subject of gentrification, or with 'Black Lives Matter' demanding that white people give their houses to black people.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Gentrification does force low income people out of their neighborhoods and cause greater instability in the lives of all of those forced to relocate because they are priced out of their neighborhood.

In other words, we shouldn't try to improve bad neighborhoods.

One approach may be to systemically improve the lifestyles of those already living there rather than just replacing them with richer folk.

Unless they own their homes you don't have a choice here--and the ones who own their own homes aren't getting forced out.

 

[Derec]

And they're doing it by parasitizing and sitting on limited resources while inflating their value.

No, they are providing a much needed product. Not everybody is able or even wants to own real estate. So renting is necessary.

Rent is effectively charging someone a premium to give you equity.

Huh? What does that even mean?

It is a product of our faulty system of "ownership", and it is fucking evil.

Faulty system of ownership? How is it faulty?

At any rate, I've looked at the ridiculous hyperbole of the OP and debugged the (probably straw man claim) demand, to find a reasonable position (or at least a position I find reasonable).

It's not hyperbole, it's what the 'Black Lives Matter' in Seattle was actually demanding when they were going around neighborhoods harassing residents.

 

[laughing dog]

Some people say something stupid and you generalize about an entire international movement?

If this was the first time #BLMers did/said something stupid, you'd have a point. But they have been doing this type of shit since they burst on the national scene in 2014.
Two recent examples from Chicago - a leader of the local #BLM chapter defended looting as a form of "reparations" and the #BLM mob is also demanding that charges against a black thug who shot at police be dismissed.

A movement with millions of people will have someone saying stupid stuff now and then. You seem to be under the impression that stupid stuff defines the movement, when there is no evidence that it does.